Ivymount plan goes before hearing examiner

Future phases of school expansion will displace day care center

Expansion plans for the Ivymount School in Potomac went before a county hearing examiner on Monday as neighbors continue to raise concerns that future phases of the school's expansion plans will push out the Beverly Farms Children's Center, a day care that subleases space from the school.

After Monday's hearing, the hearing examiner will issue a report to the Board of Appeals, the body that will have final say over the school's application for a special exception to operate a residential home on their Seven Locks Road campus as an annex to the school. The school serves more than 200 students from ages 4-21 with a wide range of disabilities including autism, Asperger's Syndrome and developmental delays.

At issue at Monday's hearing was the special exception for the home, which the school hopes to renovate into classroom space and expand in several phases. Additional phases would add a third level to the home, and build an addition from the back of the home, eventually adding 4,700 square feet to the 2,700-square-foot building. The building would provide space for vocational training for students in Ivymount's post high school program, but the number of students at the school wouldn't increase.

The school also has long-term plans to add an addition onto the school's main building to provide more classroom space, which would affect the day care. The addition could add as much as 6,900 square feet onto the 75,000-square-foot building, pending approvals. It would mostly likely be five to six years before construction would begin on the school building, which would be the expansion's final phase, depending on economic conditions.

The Board of Appeals has jurisdiction to regulate only the home — the subject of the special exception — and not the main building, which the school leases from the county. However, concerned parents of students at the day care who take issue with the school's intent to recoup the space the day care subleases in the main building gathered both at a June 4 Montgomery County Planning Board hearing and at Monday's hearing.

Ivymount has not given the day care an official notice of lease termination, according to Ivymount director of development and communications Todd Kutyla. However, he said representatives there informed Montgomery Child Care Association, Inc., which operates the day care, of the school's intent to recoup the space several years in advance as a courtesy.

"In an effort to continue to be a good neighbor, we are recommending that you continue to locate options for relocating your center," Cathy Bernard, president of the Ivymount School Board of Directors, wrote in an Oct. 20 letter to Chris Giovinazzo, executive director of Montgomery Child Care Association, Inc. Ivymount estimated that the day care center's sublease would be terminated on June 30, 2011, if the day care hasn't found an alternative location by that time, the letter went on to say. "…We hope that your efforts to locate a suitable space are in fact successful and that we will not have to exercise the termination clause in the sublease."

Kutyla said the renovated home was offered as an alternative space and rejected prior to the letter being issued. "Before we sent that letter we had discussed with them our need to expand our space and they signed the sublease with that knowledge — that was all out in the open," Kutyla said. "We've always had a good relationship with MCCA and Beverly Farms and we wanted to make sure they had plenty of time and plenty of notice and they were involved with us in helping find new space for them."

Representatives of the Beverly Farms Child Care Center Parent Council told The Gazette that subleasing has provided an affordable option for their space, and other locations suggested by Ivymount were too expensive. "Their only intention in helping us find new space is to get us out of theirs," said Kristin Stockschlaeder, co-president of the Beverly Farms Children's Center Parent Council.

The parents raised concerns that the Ivymount serves students from all across the state, though it leases a county building, and the day care is one way to provide a service to the immediate neighborhood. The center serves about 90 families in the area, and the loss of the center would be one more barrier for access to quality, affordable child care in the county, they said.

The parents have also raised the issue that a term of Ivymount's lease with the county states that it should provide day care. Other than saying that Ivymount will remain in compliance with the lease, Kutyla would not comment on whether or not Ivymount would provide day care or attempt to change the terms of its lease after Beverly Farms Child Care moves out.